Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/255

 ] really ecumenical, irrevocable and valid for all future time. The Infallibilist majority would naturally accept the dogmatic proposals introduced by the Commission of Suggestions; for that Commission, which alone possessed the privilege of introducing doctrine into the Council, and of determining what amendments should be admitted, and the form which those amendments should take, consisted of the most pronounced advocates of Infallibility. And this decision by majorities was utterly alien to the traditional methods of Christendom. "For eighteen hundred years," said Döllinger, "it has been held as a principle of the Church that decrees concerning faith and doctrine should be adopted by at least moral unanimity." And this because Bishops at a Council are primarily witnesses to the faith which they and their Churches have received; secondly, judges to examine whether the conditions of universality, perpetuity, and consent are fulfilled by a given doctrine; whether it is really a universal doctrine of the whole Church, and a constituent portion of the original Deposit divinely intrusted to the Church's keeping, and therefore a doctrine which every Christian must affirm. Consequently the judicial function of the episcopate cannot exclude the past. It extends across all history.

"A Council only makes dogmatic decrees on things already universally believed in the Church, as being testified by the Scriptures and by Tradition, or which are contained, as evident and clear deductions, in the principles which have been already believed and taught. Should, for example, the Infallibility of a single individual be put in the place of the freedom from error of the whole Church, as formerly believed and taught, this would be no development nor explanation of what was hitherto implicitly believed, nor is it a deduction that follows with logical necessity, but simply